5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken

The Virtual Economy Research Network website was launched in September 2006, so this autumn we had our fifth birthday! During the years VERN has published hundreds of posts and guest articles by some of the leading scholars and practitioners, had its texts cited in academic publications and popular media, and witnessed the meteoric rise of the social and mobile games industries that depend on virtual goods and currencies. A big thank you to all our readers and collaborators!

Unfortunately the technology behind the site was starting to show its age. Commenting was difficult and VERN integrated poorly to social media. Spam filters were not able to keep up with the new microwork-based human-generated spam. Complex backend interface discouraged writers. For this reason, we have spent the autumn moving VERN to a new platform, namely WordPress.com. This will cause some inconvenience to readers while we adjust to the new home. The biggest inconvenience is that the old URL addresses could unfortunately not be preserved. If you came here following a broken link, please use the search box to find the content that you were looking for. Each and every article continues to be available, simply under a different address. Our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.

A big thanks to Matti Nelimarkka for his massive help in the migration process!

As always, please feel free to send feedback via comments or email.

Here’s to another successful five years!

Dr Vili Lehdonvirta, Founder & Co-editor